with a robber's fate.

The experiment has been made and here is the conclusion, twice proved.
Full-grown Cats can find their way home, in spite of the distance and
their complete ignorance of the intervening ground. They have, in
their own fashion, the instinct of my Mason-bees. A second point
remains to be cleared up, that of the swinging motion in the bag. Are
they thrown out of their latitude by this stratagem, are or they not?
I was thinking of making some experiments, when more precise
information arrived and taught me that it was not necessary. The first
who acquainted me with the method of the revolving bag was telling the
story told him by a second person, who repeated the story of a third,
a story related on the authority of a fourth; and so on. None had
tried it, none had seen it for himself. It is a tradition of the
country-side. One and all extol it as an infallible method, without,
for the most part, having attempted it. And the reason which they give
for its success is, in their eyes, conclusive. If, say they, we
ourselves are blind-folded and then spin round for a few seconds, we
no longer know where we are. Even so with the Cat carried off in the
darkness of the swinging bag. They argue from man to the animal, just
as others argue from the animal to man: a faulty method in either
case, if there really be two distinct psychic worlds.

The belief would not be so deep-rooted in the peasant's mind, if facts
had not from time to time confirmed it. But we may assume that, in
successful cases, the Cats made to lose their bearings were young and
unemancipated animals. With those neophytes, a drop of milk is enough
to dispel the grief of exile. They do not return home, whether they
have been whirled in a bag or not. People have thought it as well to
subject them to the whirling operation by way of an additional